Think of picturing a cake with horizontal views of the cake layers and vertical slices of all the layers, from several directions, and then putting together a full image.

“What we have now is the whole cake. Not only can we slice it vertically – to see stratigraphy – we can also slice it horizontally, to see geomorphology,” he said.

“The detail we can see sometimes is startling,” he added.

Question 10. Is seismic geomorphology recognized as an important development?

Absolutely.

For his research, Posamentier received the Pettijohn Medal for excellence in sedimentology from the Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) in 2008 and the William Smith Medal from The Geological Society of London in 2010.

He’s been named recipient of the 2012 Robert R. Berg Award from AAPG, given “in recognition of a singular achievement in petroleum geoscience research.”

Question 11. Is this something mainly used in offshore work?

Posamentier acknowledged that seismic geomorphology has been applied extensively to offshore prospects.

“The data quality is typically better offshore because you don’t have surficial deposits like sand dunes or glacial outwash that can hit seismic data quality hard.”

But Posamentier teaches workshops and short courses on the technique, and said, “some of my best examples are from onshore.”

Question 12. Is color enhancement important in seismic geomorphology?

Color enhancement is useful, although not so much for Posamentier, who’s partly color-blind.

“I tend to gravitate to interpreting almost exclusively in the gray scale – especially in plan view images, where we’re looking for features like channels and other geomorphic elements, I just can’t see what others see,” Posamentier said.

“A lot of patterns in full color displays that are obvious to non-color-challenged interpreters are simply not obvious to me,” he said. “Hence the preference for gray scale, where these patterns jump out for me.”

Question 13. How important is experience in doing the interpretation?

Posamentier said he wouldn’t have believed it when he was younger, but significant experience turns out to be essential for good interpretation.

“The interpreter lives and dies by the ability to understand patterns. It’s all about pattern recognition,” he observed.

“The more an interpreter has seen, the more patterns he or she has stored in memory and the better an interpreter will be,” he said.

Question 14. Is seismic geomorphology now a standard tool for seismic interpreters?

It’s a mixed bag. Much of the seismic interpretation he sees still tends to focus on static views of the data in two-dimensional space, and so often just in section view.

“There’s so much information there that is ignored when you limit interpretation to the section view; this results in stratigraphic analysis without the benefit of insights derived from geomorphology,” he said. “Integration of stratigraphy and geomorphology yields a far more robust geologic solution.”

Question 15. What’s the role of the petroleum geologist in seismic geomorphology?

Petroleum geologists provide a reality check on seismic interpretation, and their importance is growing, according to Posamentier.

“Petroleum geologists have to embrace the geophysical data. They have to leverage it and accept it as just another tool in the arsenal,” Posamentier noted.

“Getting the geophysical data into the hands of earth scientists thinking geologically is absolutely critical,” he added.

Question 16. What does Posamentier see in the future for seismic interpreters and petroleum geologists?

They’ll go to the movies.

Question 17. Seriously, what does he predict?

“One of the areas where I see a lot of potential is another domain that lies largely untapped, and that is patterns when you are doing animation,” Posamentier said.

“It’s sort of like seeing a series of still photos compared to sitting in a theater and watching a movie,” he said. “It takes 3-D interpretation to a new level.”

This geology-in-motion could be the key to an advanced view of prospect geology in the future.

Posamentier Pioneered Seismic Geomorphology

Henry Posamentier, an AAPG member who helped pioneer and develop the modern approach to sequence stratigraphy and who is this year’s winner of the AAPG Robert Berg Award for Outstanding Petroleum Research, has been a scientific leader for decades.

Most recently he has pioneered and popularized the discipline of seismic geomorphology, which leverages both 2-D and 3-D seismic data to better understand the paleogeographic distribution of lithologies.

He has been a four-time AAPG Distinguished Lecturer, speaking to groups in the United States (1991-92), the Former Soviet Union (1996-97), the Middle East (1998-99) and in Europe and eastern Asia (2006), when he was the Dean A. McGee Distinguished Lecturer.

He offered two lectures that year: “Imaging Elements of Depositional Systems From Shelf to Deep Basin Using 3-D Seismic Data: Implications for Exploration and Development” and “Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Geomorphology of Deep Water Deposits Based on Analysis of 3-D Seismic Data: Reducing the Risk of Lithology Prediction.”

He received the 2001 George C. Matson Award for the paper “Seismic Geomorphology and Depositional Systems of Deep Water Environments: Observations from Offshore Nigeria, Gulf of Mexico and Indonesia.”

He also has written for the EXPLORER’s popular Geophysical Corner. EXPLORER.